Let us first explain how there can be a plurality of intelligences,
souls, and essences. If we consider the things that proceed from the
first principles, as they are numbers and not magnitudes, we shall
also have to ask ourselves how they fill the universe. This plurality
which thus arises from the first principles does not in any way help us
to solve our question, since we have granted that essence is multiple
because of the difference (of the beings that proceed from it), and
not by place; for though it be multiple, it is simultaneously entire;
"essence everywhere touches essence,"[2] and it is everywhere entirely
present. Intelligence likewise is manifold by the difference (of
the intelligences that proceed therefrom), and not by space; it is
entire everywhere. It is so also with souls; even their part which is
divisible in the bodies is indivisible by its nature. But the bodies
possess extension because the soul is present with them; or rather,
it is because there are bodies in the sense-world; it is because the
power of the Soul (that is universal) which is in them manifests itself
in all their parts, that the Soul herself seems to have parts. What
proves that she is not divided as they are, and with them, that she
is entirely present everywhere, is that by nature she is essentially
one and indivisible. Thus, the unity of the Soul does not exclude the
plurality of souls, any more than the unity of essence excludes the
plurality of (beings), or that the plurality of intelligibles does
not disagree with the existence of the One. It is not necessary to
admit that the Soul imparts life to the bodies by the plurality of
souls, nor that that plurality derives from the extension of the body
(of the world). Before there ever were any bodies, there was already
one (universal) Soul and several (individual) souls. The individual
souls existed already in the universal Soul, not potentially, but each
in actuality. The unity of the universal Soul does not hinder the
multitude of the individual souls contained within her; the multitude
of the individual souls does not hinder the unity of the universal
Soul. They are distinct without being separated by any interval; they
are present to each other instead of being foreign to each other; for
they are not separated from each other by any limits, any more than
different sciences are within a single soul. The Soul is such that in
her unity she contains all the souls. Such a nature is, therefore,
infinite.